


What They Say About the Fall

by gothicgunslinger



Category: Alan Wake (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothicgunslinger/pseuds/gothicgunslinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two women contemplate the enigma that is Alan Wake at two very different points in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What They Say About the Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asselin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asselin/gifts).



> A super-late last minute contribution to Yuletide 2012. Real life was absolutely nuts for me the last couple months, my sincerest apologies to my Yuletide recipient! I hope I do the lovely Alan Wake storyline justice. Happy holidays. :)

Part One

Bright Falls  
Present Day

Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s coffee was stale. That was the icing on the night’s bullshit cake, ever since Agent Nightingale had hauled in Alan Wake and his agent to the station, to be held for... Sarah wasn’t really sure. But now they were in a holding cell, and Nightingale sat at _her_ desk, rummaging through a manuscript and mumbling to himself. She was certain every so often he snuck a sip from a hip flask, although she wanted to blame sleep deprivation for making her see things.

It was three in the morning. Dawn felt a lifetime away. 

Sarah took a bitter swallow from her mug and approached Nightingale. “Explain to me again why you had those two arrested.”

Nightingale didn’t look up. “Evading arrest for Wake, accomplice to a crime for Wheeler...”

“And what crime’s that, exactly?” Sarah’s patience was wearing thin. She eyed the neatly typed pages in Nightingale’s hands. “Writing a novel?”

“You _don’t_ understand!” Nightingale’s fist pounded the desk, but Sarah did not jump. 

“No, you’re right, I don’t. All I know is, a lot of strange stuff has been happening and Wake seems to be at the center of it. And the only hint of a crime here is that his wife’s been missing for a week, but you don’t seem concerned about that at all.” Sarah put her coffee down on her desk and crossed her arms. “So I’d really like to know what you’ve arrested him for, or maybe I should be giving your superiors in D.C. a call.” 

Nightingale’s eyes flashed dangerously. He was drunk, to be sure. His eyes were red, and the smell of booze radiated off him in waves. How he even got Wake and Wheeler in from the Anderson farm without crashing the car was a wonder. 

He bared his teeth at her. “If you’re so damn curious, why don’t you ask _him_? He knows. Our beloved Shakespeare knows all about it.”

Nightingale leapt to his feet, swayed unsteadily, and marched away, knocking over a pencil holder as he went.

“Where the hell are you going?” Sarah demanded.

“The little men’s room, if you must know,” Nightingale slurred. He walked away, waving his arm at her without turning around. “Go on. Ask Wake. Maybe we can use it as a confession.”

The men’s room door banged open and shut. Sarah leaned against her desk and put her head down, sighing in disgust. As soon as it hit normal business hours she _would_ be giving the FBI a call. But for now, her options were limited. She frowned at the pages strewn across the desk. They were all out of order, and she was too tired to make sense of them, besides. 

Which left doing exactly what Nightingale had told her to. Although, last she’d seen, Wake and Wheeler were both passed out, sleeping off a bender of their own. Was she was only one not drunk in this town? 

Once this Alan Wake case was over, Sarah resolved to take a vacation. She could already tell she needed it. 

 

***

 

Sarah was not mistaken about the status of Wake’s consciousness. Both he and Barry Wheeler were stretched out on bunks, eyes closed. Sarah gripped the cell bars and sighed. This was no way to conduct an interrogation. She was letting Nightingale’s loose cannon attitude get to her. 

She watched Alan Wake’s face as he slept. It was strange, to even have him in her town, an honest-to-god bestselling writer. She’d read most of his books, even. Liked discussing them with her dad on Sundays, to compare Alex Casey’s life to that of their own real line of work. And now Sarah had spent the last few days trying to gauge what Wake was capable of in reality. 

Because there was a question here that nobody seemed to want to ask: where was Alice Wake? 

When Sarah had decided to go into law enforcement, her father had tried to impart whatever knowledge he could from his time spent as a cop in New York City. It was long ago, sure, before she was born. But human nature never changes, he had warned her. And when someone goes missing, you look real hard at the family. It was far more likely they were hurt by someone close to them than a random stranger. 

In Alan Wake’s case, Sarah tried to put together the facts. His volatile temper was a well-known fact, thanks to the media. His career had been uncertain footing, as well. Alice Wake had been in contact with Dr. Emil Hartman about possible treatment, something Wake hadn’t been happy about. Sarah had witnessed Wake punch Hartman herself. He was missing a week, and there were no witnesses to say where Alice might have been during that point of time. 

It didn’t look good. Yet Sarah couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Wake’s manic desperation to find Alice seemed genuine. But so did his mental instability. Could he have gone too far, let his temper explode into something lethal, and then blocked it out after the fact, because he couldn’t deal with what he had done?

Sarah didn’t want to believe that, either. Her instincts told her there was more going on, but as sheriff, she couldn’t ignore hard evidence. There just wasn’t enough of it at the moment to draw any real conclusion. 

She resisted the urge to kick the cell bars. “Did you kill your wife, Wake?” she found herself asking, barely above a whisper. Her words seemed to linger in the air between them, and for a wild moment she worried voicing the question might somehow make it true. 

“No,” said Alan Wake, and Sarah backed away from the bars, startled. 

He was awake. He struggled into a sitting position, obviously still affected by alcohol and days’ worth of running from the law in the forest.

“I didn’t — I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were—” Sarah had no good explanation for creeping over a suspect while he was supposedly asleep, and so just cut herself off. 

“It’s okay,” Wake said. “On the record or off, I don’t care. I didn’t kill her. You have my word.” 

He looked at her. He had very blue eyes, difficult to see in press photos. But in person, they became the defining feature of his face, and having them turned on her now, burning with grim determination, was unsettling. 

“I didn’t deserve her, either. That’s the irony here, I guess you could call it.” He leaned back against the cinderblock wall, eyes fixed on hers, unblinking. “I put her through hell; in return, she saved my life. And this is how I repaid her. Losing her to the darkness.” 

Something in his tone sent a chill down Sarah’s spine. 

“I want to believe you,” she said carefully. “But you have to sell me better than that.”

“There are things I can’t prove to you from here, not unless you saw them with your own eyes.” Wake hesitated. “But I can tell you about Alice.”

“Go ahead,” Sarah said, gently. “Love stories aren’t your usual shtick.”

Wake chuckled sadly. “Write what you know, right? Alice was a fluke. I couldn’t have written myself a better story than us.” He paused again. “I won’t bore you with the courtship. Or the halcyon days leading up to the wedding and after.” He swallowed. “You have to get right to the conflict, and raise the stakes as high as you can. You’ll never keep your audience if they don’t believe the protagonist could lose everything at any moment.” 

Sarah could think of nothing to say. She just nodded, urging him to continue.

Wake took a deep breath. “Well, I’m not the protagonist of this story. Alice is.”

 

***

Part Two

New York City  
One Year Ago

 

Alice Wake awoke with a start. It took her a moment to catch her bearings. She was in her apartment, in her dark room, in a chair. The room had no clock, and with the shades drawn and the red light on, there was no way to gauge the time. At least she had not left any of her photos in a tub of chemicals before falling asleep, or they would surely be ruined by now. 

She left the room and went into the kitchen. Almost nine a.m. She reached for orange juice in the fridge and tried to remember why she had been working so late into the night to begin with. 

Yes, of course. She recalled now. It was because of Alan. 

To say he’d been difficult to deal with lately was an understatement. His writer’s block had been raging for a year, and the accompanying insomnia left him irritable and short-tempered. He was spending more time with Barry – which always seemed to involve some kind of elbow-rubbing party with copious amounts of alcohol – and less time at home. Less time at home, trying to write. 

Last night, apparently, was supposed to help, according to Barry. Alan’s publisher was getting antsy, and with nothing but a title in mind for his next book, a night out on the town was somehow supposed to appease the editors. Alice had urged him not to go, but of course Alan hadn’t listened. Barry’s opinion usually trumped hers. Something about superiority. Having one’s childhood best friend as his literary agent didn’t work nearly as well as it should have, in Alice’s experience. 

So she had locked herself in the dark room, to work and hopefully miss entirely the final act of these sort of nights, when Alan stumbled in, slurring and mean. She hated that he felt the need to play the rockstar when it simply wasn’t in his nature. It didn’t become him, and it certainly wasn’t the man she had married. 

But now, with sunlight streaming safely through the windows, all was quiet. Only the ticking kitchen clock and the street traffic below permeated the silence in the apartment. Alice thought she might prefer this to the halting, frustrating discussions she tried to have with her husband. But her face felt grimy and her hair limp. She needed a shower, and she wasn’t going to avoid their bedroom just because Alan was probably still passed out in it. 

But the bedroom was empty, the smooth bedspread completely untouched. 

Alice stood in the doorway, trying to understand. Had he slept on the couch? No, the living room was similarly deserted. As was the bathroom. Alan had never come home. 

Up until that point, he had always come back. Alice could sit up, fretting, with every light in the apartment on, and yet he always returned. The one time she’d let her guard down, spent her own night in the red near-darkness, and disaster might have struck.

She tried not to panic. She grabbed the phone and dialed Alan’s cell. Straight to voicemail. Typical. 

Alice took a deep breath and called Barry Wheeler, although that was the last thing she wanted to do. 

He sounded disoriented, hung over. “Huh? Whaddaya want?”

“Where’s Alan?” Alice tried to sound civil, but her demand came out harsh, despite her best efforts. 

“I dunno. Whaddaya mean? He isn’t with you?” Barry’s voice quickly shifted to annoyed, the way it always did when they spoke to each other.

“No. He never came home last night, Barry. I thought he might be with you.” It was an accusation and Alice knew it. She didn’t care. 

“Well, he ain’t,” Barry said. “I left the bar early, I wasn’t feeling too good. He said he could get himself home.” 

“Yeah, like he’s great at making those kind of decisions, especially after you pump him full of liquor.” Alice had to suppress a bitter laugh.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, sweetheart. Don’t go making those kind of assumptions. You ever wonder why he’s so eager to go out to these shindigs? Trouble at home, I reckon.” Barry coughed. “He probably just found a hotel so he wouldn’t have to face your wrath. ‘Cause it really ain’t pretty, I tell ya.”

It was all Alice could do not to scream at him. “What bar was it?”

“What?”

“I _said_ , what bar was it? Because at least one of us should be concerned about finding him.”

“Oh, for God’s...” Barry muttered under his breath. “Okay, okay. It’s the new one at St. Mark’s Place. The Dog House. Fitting name, don’tcha think?”

Alice hung up without saying goodbye. 

 

***

 

The Dog House didn’t open until noon, so Alice spent a very tense three hours hoping Alan would come through the front door and save her a trip. But he didn’t, and he didn’t call, and he didn’t pick up his phone. So out she went. 

She took the subway to Astor Place and walked down the stretch of street known as St. Mark’s Place. It was notorious for its artsy vibe, although storefront after storefront of tattoo parlors and smoke shops didn’t impress Alice very much. It was a young person’s hangout, and Alan, years past thirty at this point, probably stuck out like a sore thumb. So did Alice, in fact. A natural blond in jeans and a conservative sweater seemed odd against all the glaring hair colors, studded jackets and bohemian skirts. These people were more concerned with looking like an artist than being one, Alice thought. The reality of the hard work involved seemed to be the farthest thing from their nicotine-stimulated minds. 

Or maybe she was just getting old, too. 

If a bar opened at noon, there were bound to already be people inside. Alice stepped in cautiously, looking around. She half-hoped, half-feared one of the figures slumped over the bar would be Alan, that maybe they’d just let him sleep here. But that would mean he was already back at drinking. 

He wasn’t, in any event. None of the hardened faces matched her husband. 

The bartender had hair dyed blue-black that fell into his eyes. He looked young himself, barely twenty-one. 

“Hi,” Alice said, slipping onto a stool and giving him a bright smile. “I was hoping you could help me.”

The bartender cocked an eyebrow. “Does it involve pouring you a drink?”

“It involves my husband,” Alice said, opting to get down to business. She folded her hands on the wooden bar counter. “I was told he was here last night.”

The bartender grabbed a rag to wipe the bar and wrung it between his hands. “Hey, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Good, neither do I. So hopefully you’ll be able to tell me what I need to know. Were you working last night?”

He nodded. 

“Did you happen to see a man in a tweed jacket, in his thirties, blue eyes?” she asked.

Recognition sparked in his eyes. “Shit, you mean that author dude? That’s your husband? Man, he was wasted.”

Alice did not want to know the gritty details. The situation was already embarrassing enough as it was. “Do you know when he left?”

“Uh, let’s see. Last call was 2. We kinda had to encourage him to leave, if you know what I mean.”

Alice sighed. “Did he say anything about where he planned to go?”

The bartender shook his head. “I think I saw him get into a taxi. Sorry, lady, that’s all I got.”

“Was he alone? In the taxi?” The words felt like molasses in her mouth, difficult to get out. It was a possibility she didn’t even want to entertain, but given the way Alan had been acting... She had to be practical.

“Yeah,” said the bartender, and Alice relaxed minutely. “It was just him.”

“Thanks,” Alice said, and slid off the barstool, heading for the door.

“You sure you don’t want a drink?” the bartender called after her. “You look like you could use it.”

Alice shook her head, smiled sadly, slung her purse over her shoulder, and left the bar.

 

***

Alice got on the subway, found a seat, and sat in a daze. Her investigation, if you could call it that, had taught her next to nothing. Alan had left a bar drunk at two in the morning and never returned home. He could have gone anywhere. He could just be avoiding her, as Barry had said. But she didn’t believe that. With every passing second she grew more certain that he was in trouble somehow. 

She tried to think. She knew Alan better than anyone. Drunk and lonely, where would he go at two a.m.? 

Alice let it run around and around in her head, but every time she came up with the same answer: home. No matter how angry, tired, or frustrated Alan became – and not just at her – he always came home. It was his solace. Sure, they had their disagreements, but they always found common ground, forgave each other, and vowed to move forward together. 

But if that was the case, then where was he? 

_It’s true what they say about the fall and the sudden stop at the end._

The first line of Alan’s last novel bubbled up from her subconscious. The words hit her so strongly, it was as if they hung in the air in front of her. Alice had been uneasy reading Alan’s drafts of The Sudden Stop, knowing that he planned to kill off Alex Casey and never return to the book series that had made him so prosperous. It wasn’t the risk of losing money from the franchise that had bothered her. It was that he had grown so weary of his characters and their world that he would dash them so callously against a stone. Or hurl Alex Casey from a building, as it were. She had lightly joked that he was pulling an Arthur Conan Doyle and that hadn’t worked out so well for him. But fan backlash or not, Alan had been determined. This was where Alex Casey’s story must end, and in turn, Alan would be free.

But the last year hadn’t exactly been liberating for him. And now, on the bustling subway, Alice recalled the vivid language of Alex Casey’s demise. That had always set her on edge, too. It was so detailed, so visceral, she wondered if Alan hadn’t been planning it for years. Over and over in his head. Thinking it, breathing it, living it. 

She knew there was a line between fiction and reality, but...

And suddenly, she knew exactly where Alan was. She gasped aloud, put her hands over her mouth. She was two stops away from home. She leapt out of her seat. The train car could not move fast enough.

She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

 

***

 

The front of Alice and Alan’s apartment building was mercifully devoid of police cars and blood. Nightmares visions flashed through Alice’s head, a redux of images from The Sudden Stop. Damn Alan and his way with words. 

She rushed through the foyer and into the elevator. 

There was only one place Alan would tell a cab driver to go. Home. But under the influence of alcohol, and reeling from their argument earlier that evening, he would not have been able to press the number for their floor. Instead, he kept riding up and up. Their building had roof access, and Alan loved metaphors. Falls from grace and sudden stops. Alice’s hands shook as she jabbed the button for the top floor and then endured the longest elevator ride of her life. 

There he was, not on the edge, but close. Sitting with his back to her, staring at the New York skyline. 

“Alan,” she called out, and he turned, startled. 

He was pale, eyes a watery red. He was surprised to see her. “How did you find me?”

Alice did not have a concrete explanation. “I know you,” she said finally. 

He seemed to accept that, and turned away from her again. 

“I was worried sick,” she said, when he refused to speak. 

“I know,” Alan said softly. “I needed time to think.”

“About what?” She kept her voice soft, inching her way closer to him.

“I screwed up everything. My writing. My livelihood.” He glanced to her. “And now I’m screwing up my marriage.”

In that moment, Alice ached for him. That was the problem with creative personalities, especially writers. They became so wrapped up in writing plots, they often forgot they couldn't just write themselves a happy ending. Things weren't that simple.

“So what?” she said. “There’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Not with the two of us to attack the problem. I believe that, absolutely.” 

Alan did not speak. Alice tentatively sat beside him and watched his face.

“You wanna know what I think?” she asked.

Alan looked at her and cocked his head.

“I think you’re afraid of self-fulfilling prophecies. But you’re not Alex Casey,” Alice said. She took his hand and squeezed it. “You didn’t write yourself into a corner. I’ll show you that. You just have to let me. Please.”

He sat silent for almost a full minute, and Alice hoped. She didn’t know how else to reach him, but whatever it took, she refused to leave that rooftop until Alan came inside with her. 

Eventually, he did. They tried to work on his problems together. Sometimes he performed admirably. Other times he lost his temper and drank too much and took his anger out on her. But she refused to leave. She believed in him. 

And then one day, they decided to take a vacation to Bright Falls, Washington.

 

***

 

Part Three

Bright Falls  
Present Day

Alan Wake closed his eyes and slumped against the jail cell wall. 

“I still don’t know how she knew I was on the roof that day,” he said quietly. “And she was right. I was thinking of jumping, just like Alex Casey. If she hadn’t come, I might have worked up the nerve.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah Breaker said, although she wasn’t sure for what. 

“It doesn’t matter now,” Alan said. “What matters is that I find her. She didn’t give up on me, and I won’t give up on her. No matter the cost.”

Sarah believed him. She sighed, shaking her head. “Nightingale’s a nut. If it were up to me, I’d release you both for lack of evidence. But you just have to wait a few more hours until I can get on the phone with his bosses in Washington.”

“I don’t think we have a few hours,” Alan said grimly. “But thank you.”

“Just try to get some sleep,” Sarah said. “I’ll deal with Nightingale.”

He was bound to be out of the bathroom by now. He was probably pouring over the manuscript pages again. Alan lay back down, but Sarah lingered by the holding cell, thinking about his story. Now that her gut told her Alan Wake was not responsible for his wife’s disappearance, that still left the question of who was. 

She had the uneasy feeling she might find out soon.  


End file.
